Our holdings include hundreds of glass and film negatives/transparencies that we've scanned ourselves; in addition, many other photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs) in the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) They are adjusted, restored and reworked by your webmaster in accordance with his aesthetic sensibilities before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here. All of these images (including "derivative works") are protected by copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions and may not be sold, reproduced or otherwise used for commercial purposes without permission.

One of the defining characteristics of old photographs, at least those before the 1970s, is how adult and mature everyone always looks. Even whom we would refer to as "young people."

You just didn't have grown men sitting around in public places in shorts, tee shirts with advertising on them, and baseball caps back then. No one would take you at all seriously if you dressed like that; and you'd more than likely be considered a bum, a menial worker or a nut.

Of course, in today's courtrooms people make the effort to dress as well, but until the 1970s, ALL adults, if they wanted to be taken seriously, made the effort to dress like grown and responsible men and women.

Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo blog featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1950s. The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.